Server systems provide data and interaction for mobile employee operations for the business enterprise. Mobile employees through mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDA), mobile web phones, pocket PCs and laptops access server resources over the Internet via wired or wireless telecommunication networks. When connected, mobile employees access data such as business forms, company guidelines, customer information, and the like. However, there are many times when a mobile employee does not have access to a wired or wireless connection but has a continuing need to access the enterprise data. Additionally, even when a mobile device has access to server resources, transmission of data needs to be efficient to satisfy the changing needs for information. For instance, the current cost of data bandwidth in some countries exceeds $0.01/kbyte.
Current commercial connection systems typically provide cached web pages in a browser on the mobile device for access to only previously browsed information when disconnected or offline. The web cache page process is static in that the process is limited to caching only the browsing paths executed by the mobile employee. To implement this process, a proxy is a software component executed on the mobile device to communicate with the enterprise server and cache visited pages or uniform resource locators (URLs). The proxy requires each request to display a page or URL made to the enterprise server to be redirected to the proxy in order to allow visited pages to be redisplayed when the user is disconnected. This caching process is data intensive since the proxy must make individual hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) requests for each page accessed by the mobile device as the user browses the web site.
Moreover, the proxy may record each page retrieved from the enterprise server and translate full path names carried in the HTTP request to a specific address depending on the mobile device's chosen medium. For example, a proxy running in a web phone would have to translate the full path names as stored on a web server to full path names to a memory stick. In support of making individual requests, the design of the proxy may consist of intricate code paths and header files associated with individual requests to process each request and response. Further, the transport layer in the communication protocol for mobile devices contains many bits of overhead when transmitting each request.
Clearly, mobile employees need to access enterprise server resources with greater efficiency and in a transparent manner for both connected and disconnected environments. Considering the cost of bandwidth transmission, latency, and the extensive information stored on corporate web sites, a need exists for methods and systems of providing access to an enterprise server resource through a mobile device in an efficient manner since network costs increase as the size of the data delivery increases.